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Albertsons Parent Company To Buy Safeway, Chains To Merge

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DENVER (AP/CBS4) – Safeway, which has 13 stores in Denver and dozens of others across the state, has agreed to be acquired by an investment group led by Cerberus Capital Management, the owner several supermarket chains.

The acquisition is worth about $7.64 billion in cash, and pending other transactions could top more than $9 billion.

The deal, announced late Thursday, will bring together Safeway and Albertsons, which also has a handful of stores in Colorado. Cerberus last year had bought the Albertsons stores it didn’t already own from Supvalu Inc., along with four other Supervalu chains.

Safeway said in February that it was looking into putting itself up for sale. The Pleasanton, Calif.-based company has been trying to adapt for some time to increased competition and recently shed some of its smaller, less profitable units, such as its Canadian operations and Dominick’s stores in Chicago.

The company has more than 1,300 U.S. locations under banners including Safeway, Vons, Pavilion’s, Randall’s, Tom Thumb and Carrs.

AB Acquisition LLC, which operates Albertsons, along with Acme, Jewel-Osco, Lucky, Shaw’s and other stores, is owned by Cerberus and other investors. It operates more than 1,000 stores. Albertsons is based in Boise, Idaho.

Combined, the companies will have more than 2,400 stores, 27 distribution facilities and 20 manufacturing plants.